I tend to cook up a storm for Christmas dinner. And why not? It's all about having a big feast and being extravagant with food. I remember talking to my niece on the phone one Christmas when she was four, and she was so excited because "we've got a big lump of meat for dinner!"

When it comes to turkey I'm always hugely surprised at how much meat is on there. I don't know why when I was just as surprised the year before! But there you go. All those sleeps between Christmases seems to wipe the memory clean.

It isn't just the cooked food that you need to make use of afterwards. There's all the other little odds and bods. Like the two carrots left in the bag, the half a courgette, the other half of the asparagus.

Here we are two days after Christmas and I'm still left wondering, what creative things can I do with all the left overs, other than sandwiches? What is it that you all do?

Bouillon Is Brilliant

First I had to get rid of the leftovers from the chicken I roasted on Christmas Eve! I love Marigold Swiss Vegetable Bouillon. It is so much creamier and tastier than stock, even the home made stuff. So it all went in a casserole dish after being first cooked a little in olive oil and the chopped up red onion that I'd forgotten to put in the roast vegetable medley on Christmas day!

Along with the last few carrots remaining in the bag, not needed for Christmas dinner. And the final eighth of the Savoy cabbage I didn't need on Christmas eve. A splash of soya sauce, a little cornflour, and sliced potatoes on top. And there you have it, my leftover hotpot.

To Soup Or Not To Soup

Diane, mum to two  girls, took her turkey left overs down the soup route. "I made a turkey broth this year - boiled the carcass, got the meat off it, skimmed off the fat from the liquid (discard fat), used the stock, meat, left over veggies (carrots, potato and parsnips) added some sweetcorn. It was a hit! People are still making sarnies from the carved turkey of course. The sprouts went to feed the chickens this year - learned from my mistake last year, don't put them in soup! it's all you will taste."

However, there was a bit of a divide about whether to use the bones for soup or not amongst our parents. Mum to a lively lad of 11, Donna, is firmly in the other camp. Donna says " don't recook turkey or use bones for broth." She had a few other lovely suggestions instead.

Tasty Treats

The leftover recipe ideas that Donna came up with shows what a great cook she is. I'm not sure I could pull these off, and I'm sure I'd never do it as well as she can, but they sure do sound simple enough and totally delicious. Especially this one for what to do with the left over roast potatoes (although along with Dad Chris, I'm in the group who's MORE than happy to eat these tasty treats cold, as they are!).

Donna's suggestion for lots of leftover roasties is to "make an adapted version of stuffed potatoes/delphinoise. Add cheese, red onion, tomatoes, bake to melt cheese - or add cheese and bacon - and then serve with a dollop of sour cream."

I dearly love frittata, although I have to admit I've never been brave enough to make it myself. This is a great idea for left over sprouts though! Donna says "cube the potatoes and A FEW sprouts, add cheese and make a frittata."

But, I don't have a frittata pan. What to do? "All you need is a skillet" Donna says.  "TEFAL is good. An 8-inch skillet can cook a frittata made of 5 eggs, a good handful of grated hard cheese (parmesan or romano, but cheddar ok too), 6 sprouts chopped and one cubed potato. Season eggs well with salt, pepper and a bit of herbes de Provence, if you like. Also, cooked onion, chopped and sweat til brown, are delicious added to mix."

"I do my frittata in a big frying pan - or some kind of pie-tin or cake-tin if necessary" says Shona. However, Donna wonders if a pie or cake tin would really make a frittata - given that the word means 'fry' - or a quiche. I personally think a quiche sounds like another great idea!

Sweetly Simple

Mum to three - two boys and a girl ranging from 11 to just under 1- Carolyn keeps it a bit more low key and just throws her leftovers into an omelette. Shona likes to go very British on Boxing day sticking all the vegetable leftovers into "bubble & squeak and fried egg".

Want something a bit different for sandwiches then try this idea from Donna. "Cube leftover turkey and spuds, add red onion, bacon bits and tomatoes, either mayo or salad cream, and make American-style sandwich filling."

Tricky Stuffing

I don't know how but I ended up with three quarters of a small pie dish full of stuffing left over. It didn't look like that much in the packet! It makes a nice garnish inside sandwiches, of course. Very tasty. But, really there's only so much in the way of sandwiches you can eat really.

I did a google search on this one and discovered that you can freeze it! So I've done that. Suggestions online include using it to stuff pork (will have a go next time we have pork),and  using it in meatloaf (not sure exactly what this is outside of US TV shows, but will look up a recipe).

Then we're back at the soup option again! I found this Phil Vickery (chef on ITV's This Morning) recipe during my search. It's called Leftover Sunday lunch roast chicken broth, and uses 150g of leftover stuffing.

And Finally

The great thing about left over recipes are that they're not just for Christmas! You can use them any other time of the year when you cook up a big meal. So please do share here - what do you do?

Suddenly you remember - tomorrow is the cake sale at school/party at Brownies/your turn to bring cakes for the PTA morning. Please allow me to introduce you to the Lamington. This cake is a staple of every cake sale/birthday party/gathering in New Zealand, Australia and, I'm told, South Africa.

I don't know why Lamington cakes aren't more popular in the UK. They're easy to make, and quick too. In brief, a Lamington is a small square of sponge cake (or butter or pound cake) dipped in a liquid chocolate icing and rolled in coconut. The end result is as pictured above. And even the more inexpert cook will be able to come up with something similar. My effort is below; it has been YEARS since I made any. But I think they still looked pretty good.

I took a shortcut. For my Lamingtons, I used three packets of Sainsbury's Basics Sponge mix (22p a packet; 66p in total). You'll also need three eggs (Iceland 12 for £1 = 8p each; 24p in total). By this stage I had spent 90p, overall I'd estimate it cost £1.50. Just follow the instructions on the packet. Use a timer - it is amazing how long 3 minutes actually is when you have to hold a heavy handheld mixer.

For baking, I used a large, crockery baking dish. Do use greaseproof paper to line the dish, even if you're using a non-stick tin. I have made that mistake before. If you butter the dish first, the paper will stick down to the shape of the tray and make it easier to pour the mix in.

One tip I came across while looking for Lamington recipes is to refrigerate the sponge for at least two hours, and up to 24 hours. You don't have to do this, but I did found the dipping process a lot easier after it had been in the fridge a few hours.

Once you've got your sponge, you need the icing to dip the cakes into. The Edmond's CookBook (bestseller in NZ since 1927) has this recipe:

• 2 tablespoons of cocoa
• 6 tablespoons of boiling water
• 25g of butter, melted
• 2 1/4 cups of icing sugar
• 1/4 teaspoon of vanilla essence

But then I found that I had no butter! So I used this recipe on Taste.com.au. It worked just fine although without perhaps that rich gloss you get from the butter.

Cut your sponge into squares, about the size you'd consider a portion for one person. Dip the squares in the icing. Now for this, I used another tip I found while researching this post. I used two forks. One holding the sponge from underneath, and the other fork to hold the sponge in place. For the coconut I had two plates. One to put the cake on while I sprinkled generous handfuls of the coconut over it, turning the cake around with the forks.

And that's it. The dunking part takes a while, but otherwise it is pretty quick. My son had a great time with it as it doesn't matter if you drop the cake in the icing mixture. Just fish it out again. Nor does it matter if the sponge cake happens to come apart. You just have two slightly smaller cakes. Be warned though, this is hugely messy when little fingers are involved.

What is your favourite quick and easy cake recipe? I'd love to hear them, and we had great fun swapping ideas on the Pumpkin Recipes post written for Halloween! Although, I bet you can't get much quicker than the three-minute cake in a cup.  Check it out here. Perfect for those times when you just NEED cake but possibly not the sort of thing you can take to the cake sale...

Halloween: is this another bunch of commercial nonsense imposed on us from over the pond? Or a nice theme to use to keep the kids occupied on a wet half term holiday?

For me it is the latter, and I love it. Partly because it is the only time you can give kids sweeties by the handful! But also because for me it is one of the cheapest, if not THE cheapest, themed event of the year. Last time I talked about how I made costumes out of bin liners. Now I'm looking at how a few quid spent on a vegetable can turn your house into a Halloween mecca AND feed you.

Carving

What I love the most about the simple pumpkin is how this one item can totally transform a house into a Halloween friendly home. What other single decoration can achieve the same result? Not even a Santa on his own is enough to warm up an entire night.

But last year, as I took my (then) four year old son and some friend's children trick or treating around our friendly neighbourhood, I couldn't help notice and marvel at just what a difference a smiley faced pumpkin with a candle in it made!

Lots of houses had put just one, or sometimes up to three, of these in their front porches to show they were open and ready to receive little trick or treaters and hand out candy. And on a cold, dark October night, they looked warm and inviting with their glowing faces and rich orange colour.

And all for the cost of just a cheap pumpkin and a tealight! So this year I resolved to make one myself, and because there's no point in wasting good vegetables, find out how to make something out of the scooped out innards.

How to do it?

Pumpkin carving. Simple right? All you have to do is stick a knife in it, make a mouth and some eyes. Anyone can do that right? Four ruined pumpkins later and my other half and I decided that maybe we should try looking this up online.

Naturally the US does this best. The most interesting one I found was Pumpkin Carving 101. This site even covers how to 'lay to rest' your pumpkin after the 31st! In my borough this burial will be taking place in the food scraps bin.

The pumpkin carving tutorials on here are fab, with lots of practical tips. Believe it or not, but make a six sided hole in the top really did work far better than trying to curve out a round one. I don't know why that's the case, maybe it is because you are only concentrating on cutting a bit at a time. At least with this method we didn't accidentally slice right down the side of the pumpkin!

My son and his friend had a great time making a big gooey mess pulling all the innards out of the pumpkin.

The other site we found that was immensely useful, particularly on how to select a pumpkin, was a British one. If you're not already familiar with the BBC's fabulous H2G2 website, founded by Douglas Adams of the Hitchhikers guide to the galaxy fame, then start now. This is a marvellous, fully edited, gold mine of interesting and helpful information. Check out this entry on The Perfect Halloween Pumpkin.

Pumpkin preservation

I came across a couple of good tips. One is that you can restore a dry, wrinkled up pumpkin by soaking it in water. The other is that a coating of petroleum jelly will stop it drying out too quickly. Now this is something I'd never have thought of, and if you're making your pumpkin lanterns a day or two before hand it is probably pretty vital. It won't surprise you to find that in the US you can buy pumpkin preserving dip or pumpkin preserver spray to do the same thing.

Pumpkin Pie

Now I'm not about to waste perfectly good food. So what to do with all those gooey insides?

Pumpkin pie is a dish that I've often seen in US movies and TV programmes. But it isn't something I've ever had, nor have I ever heard of it being made when I was growing up. Thinking that really, it does sound a bit weird (pumpkin as pudding?) I turned to the PlayPennies mums who are from the US for advice.

Only it turned out no-one made it. I got offers of Baked Pumpkin Cheesecake, and Pumpkin Marble Cake. But no pie.

Caroline, a mum of two in Ireland, loves this Anthony Worrell Thompson recipe for pumpkin pie, reproduced on the BBC Food website here. Sarah, a Brit who now lives in British Columbia, Canada, sent me this simple recipe. So easy to do that after a hard morning carving, I got the boys to help make me pie.

1 pre-made pie crust
3/4 cup pumpkin puree
1 cup packed brown sugar
3/4 cup evaporated milk
2 eggs, beaten
1tsp cinnamon
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/4 tsp ground ginger
1/4 tsp salt

I couldn't find a pie crust so just rolled out pre-made shortcrust pasty instead. And I forgot the ginger. And by pumpkin puree I figured that the mess the boys had made of the insides was enough. And yes we'd all washed hands before the carving!

But it all turned out OK in the end. All you have to do is mix all the stuff together in a bowl and stick in in the pastry. Bake for 14 mins at gas mark 6, then turn down to gas mark 4 for half an hour or until a knife inserted comes out clean.

What do you do?

Halloween, fun or nonsense? Are we just creating another commercial rod for our backs by celebrating this event? What do you do on the 31st?

And, perhaps more importantly, what fabulous and tasty ways have you found to cook/eat pumpkin?

Years ago my mum went through phases of shopping monthly - they were a killer, especially if we were required to stop playing and help bring everything from the car.

I was talking to her about shopping monthly v weekly the other day (I just can't face the thought of shopping for an entire month!) and she said it was only possible with planning a menu for the whole month - I remember it being stuck up on the kitchen door!

Well, I'm not anything as remotely organised as that and even if we do have a menu for the week, I must confess to deviating from it now and again.  This of course leaves me with random ingredients come the end of the week and sometimes my brain struggles to conjure up things to make from this rather ecclectic culinary collection of foods.

• Click HERE to pay a visit to the RecipeChimp

RecipeChimp to the RESCUE!  I've been playing around with this little application (I suppose you'd call it) for far too much of the morning and I swear my waistline is already expanding just from having read some of the scrummy recipes the 'Chimp' has come up with.

Basically you enter the key ingredients you'd like to cook with - or the random ones you found lurking in the back of the freezer - and it will point you in the direction of foody sites that have recipes which include those things!

You can also ask it to exclude items too if your kids, or guests if you're planning a dinner party, don't like various ingredients or are allergic to certain things.

It's a really cute little 'thing' and could help take the hassle out of trying to decide what to have for dinner when your mind's gone blank!